Netflix reportedly considering buying Letterboxd

23 July 2026

Since its expansion from movie rentals and streaming into original content, Netflix has made it clear that its sole priority is Netflix, not its customers, and certainly not the art of visual media.

Members of Letterboxd, a social network for lovers of film, founded in 2011 by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, are up in arms.

I can understand creators of popular products/platforms eventually wanting to realise some reward for their efforts. It can only be hoped, should rumours of a sale have foundation, that any new owner has a bona fide interest in film.

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To read more, pick up a book not your phone, no wait…

23 July 2026

Hobart, Tasmania, based Australian software engineer Elia Scotto:

First of all, you don’t have to make time to read. What you need to do is read every single time you are not doing something else. In today’s world, most people pick up their phones as soon as they get a moment of inactivity. Serious readers pick up their books instead.

I’ve been having difficulty finding time to read books recently, for various reasons, and am still working on a way to resolve this.

Since removing most of the social media apps from my phone though, I’m not spending so much time looking at it. That’s eventually going to free up some time to read.

Ironically though, I’ll probably end up reading e-books, on my phone. I know that isn’t the idea, but it’s better than not reading at all. Besides, I don’t like hauling physical media around.

But, if you feel you don’t have enough time to read books, whether print or electronic, try deleting the social media apps from your phone, as a first step.

Reading books has to be more fulfilling than doomscrolling social day-in and day-out.

fLaMEd Fury speaks on Wonders of Web Weaving podcast

23 July 2026

I wrote about the Wonders of Web Weaving podcast on Monday, and I’m back. A couple of days ago, an interview with New Zealand/Aotearoa IndieWeb blogger fLaMEd, of fLaMEd Fury, was posted.

FlaMEd has been online with a personal website around the same time as I have — the late 1990’s — so the show made for fascinating listening. Tune in if you get a chance.

Are bloggers the same as writers, journalists, under the Australian AI framework?

21 July 2026

Last week the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled his government’s AI strategy. Part of the proposed framework includes a provision to ensure Australian writers, musicians, artists, and journalists, are paid in the event their work is used in the development of AI agents.

This is as it should be. Anyone else who wants to access copyrighted material needs to pay. It should be no different for the big tech, and AI, companies.

As someone who writes predominately online, a blogger, I see myself as either a writer and/or a journalist, in terms of this framework. I know it sound like I’m being pedantic, and surely most people would assume a blogger is regarded as a writer or a journalist.

But is that the way I would actually be viewed under the proposed AI framework? Albanese, after all, made no mention of bloggers, or other online content creators.

Of course, the Prime Minister’s speech was a statement of policy intention, and the finer details, will, I assume, come later as the AI strategy is devised.

The matter is of interest though, as I’m one of who-knows-how-many Australian bloggers whose writings have been harvested in recent years, most likely by AI companies. Would bloggers also be subject to the provisions being proposed for writers, musicians, artists, and journalists?

Or does the exclusively digital nature of a blogger’s work somehow diminish its stature? Will any sort of payment for work copied or used by AI companies only apply to mediums that exist firstly in a physical form, such as books or paintings?

These are mediums that can be digitised (somehow), making them attractive fodder for knowledge hungry AI agents, but does their physical form still give them precedence?

To be clear, I’m not talking about copyright. Any work created in Australia is protected by copyright laws, including that of bloggers. Generally for copyright to apply, a work must be created by a person, be original, and be “fixed”, that is, the work must exist in a tangible form.

This includes content on a web page. Australian bloggers are covered then by copyright. Regardless of whether anyone actually takes notice.

But while Australian copyright laws apply to “people who express original ideas and information in certain forms“, the proposed AI strategy, based on what we know at present, seems far more specific. Writers, musicians, artists, and journalists. Not bloggers, or other content creators working online.

Time will tell though whether Albanese was being specific or not.

As I wrote last week, given the amount of scraping and copying that has already occurred, a large number of Australian creatives will have already lost out, in terms of compensation.

It’s my feeling then any payments that AI companies may be required to make, will only apply to works created after any legislation is enacted. Anything else could be complicated to say the least.

Again though, time will tell.

Kristoffer Tjalve, Elliot Cost, discuss Internet Phone Book, on Wonders of Web Weaving podcast

20 July 2026

A new edition of the Internet Phone Book is in the works, and co-publishers Elliot Cost, and Kristoffer Tjalve (also a Tiny Awards organiser), recently spoke about the esteemed directory on the Wonders of Web Weaving podcast.

There are a ton of podcasts out there, but I take time out to tune in to Wonders of Web Weaving, hosted by James’ Coffee Blog, when a new show is posted.

Production is refreshingly straightforward and stripped back. Absent are ads, the seeming requisite chessy/generic intro/outro music, and conversation starts without delay. There’s a rawness seasoned podcast listeners may not care for, but to me this is part of the charm.

Sometimes glitches even make it into the final cut. On one occasion, someone’s connection dropped out part way through, which was simply acknowledged instead of being smoothed over in post-production. Re-wilding the web in true IndieWeb/SmallWeb fashion…

AI here to stay, accept it, says Australian government, vows artist copyright protection

17 July 2026

Anthony Albanese, the Australian Prime Minister, says he wants to make Australia an “attractive destination” for investment in AI development, during a speech delivered on Wednesday.

Albanese also wants to balance the opportunities and risks presented by the technologies, particularly concerns that AI uptake will result in widespread job losses.

AI will take away jobs, he said, but will also create new and different lines of work.

Among proposals is a coordinated national framework, rather than a state-by-state approach, that will oversee matters including the construction of AI data centres.

In short, data centres will be required to generate their own power, by way of renewable energy sources, and minimise water consumption.

During his speech, Albanese also gave an undertaking to protect the intellectual property of Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists:

An artist’s creative endeavour is their work and their property. No company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist’s control. That includes the artist’s control of the price and value of their work. Anything less, is theft.

These are words Australian artists and creatives wanted to hear.

Protections will doubtless be included in upcoming legislation, but after rampant marauding of creative material by AI scraper bots in recent years, the move might come too late.

The proposed laws might protect work created in the future, but what of copyrighted content that has already been copied, and digested, by AI agents?

Will AI companies who used creative work in the past be required to offer retrospective remuneration? Will these entities, many of whom are based outside Australia, be the slightest bit concerned by these proposals?

Australian government proposes AI national framework, standards

16 July 2026

Clare Armstrong, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

Australia will seek to harness the benefits of artificial intelligence without losing control of it by tackling challenges such as data centres, copyright, and jobs through a new national framework.

Buoyed, no doubt, by the… success of the social media ban for Australians aged under sixteen, the Australian government is setting its sights on AI.

But I shouldn’t be so cynical.

An Office of AI will be established within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and will be tasked with drafting standards guiding development and deployment of the technologies.

Roger Montgomery: how SpaceX achieved that two trillion dollar valuation

16 July 2026

SpaceX’s two-trillion dollar (US) share-market valuation astonished market analysts, investors, and probably a great many other people, alike. Roger Montgomery, an Australian financial adviser, sets out in simple terms how the remarkable figure was calculated. My head is still spinning.

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Reading was something we used to do before AI came along

13 July 2026

Rose Horowitch, writing for The Atlantic (gift link):

Reading has come to seem extraneous even to some of the best-educated members of society. Margaret Rennix, Harvard’s assistant director for humanities and social-sciences support, told me she’d spoken with a student who was struggling to read a book written in Old English. The culprit: Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange. (The student used ChatGPT to “translate” the book into easier language.)

I used to read a lot. But that was when for a couple of years I wasn’t doing too much writing here. Once blogging resumed, reading, or finding time to read, became more challenging.

There’s a correlation here. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Nothing to do with AI. One activity increases, the other decreases. There’s only so much time in the day, after all.

It’s a poor excuse not to read though. And then there are book bloggers, who need to read in order to blog meaningfully about what they say they’ve read.

The example of the Harvard (how can that be?) student who was struggling to read A Clockwork Orange is another matter though. I don’t know anything about the individual in question, but I suspect blogging wasn’t holding them back from reading.

Maybe they simply didn’t like the novel, even if it was required reading for their course.

Move over Wordle, here is a new word game: 18 Words

13 July 2026

If you’ve had enough of Wordle, here’s something new to try.

You’re given a jumbled-up selection of letters, and have thirty-seconds to figure out the word. The game starts out with a couple of four-letter words, but the they get longer as you progress.

There’s no need to tell anyone how you fared….

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